July, 1909 
AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 
261 
The dining-room is wood-paneled and has a handsome mantel of black and white marble 
The entrance drive debouches into a great circle beyond 
the house—arranged for the return of conveyances—and the 
low stone wall is, within, ablaze with bloom, the simple 
lovely old flowers that seem the only kind to grow in a place 
of this sort, and which are so gently, yet so completely, in 
harmony with the architect’s design. Beyond are the woods, 
wild and woody as every nature-left wood must be. The 
roadway, that at first is quite new, speedily loses its fresh- 
ness and becomes a dim old country road, that winds 
around and through the woods, and which brings you to 
places quite unexpectedly remote from the house and civiliza- 
tion. ‘There are grand old trees in this wood, and many 
lesser ones, and quite down on the ground that delightful 
riot of little things that abound in woods and nowhere else. 
It is a charming place, and a finer inner screen to the delight- 
ful house Mr. Carrére has built for his own use. 
The Wild Mushrooms 
By Benjamin W. Douglass 
fii HEN the first wet wind of early spring 
_ blows through the March woods and coaxes 
into activity the live things which have 
lain dormant on the bosom of the earth 
all winter, the mushroom lover is sure to 
be about, tramping the woods in search of 
early specimens of his favorite delicacy. 
And from that time on until late in autumn 
he will find many treasures in field and 
forest which he will carry home to his own 
banquet board—for the mushroom hunter is essentially an 
epicure. 
From the pussy-willow days till the frosts of Indian sum- 
mer there is a long season, during which the native mush- 
rooms may be found and gathered, and, to one who really 
likes mushrooms (and this is essential), there is no more 
fascinating branch of nature study. ‘There is something 
primitive about going direct to nature to get something to 
eat. It touches a chord deep down somewhere in our being 
which has not been touched since our ancestors wrenched 
their living from the earth by main force, perhaps with a 
rifle in early America—or perhaps with a stone axe in early 
Europe. It is this rudimentary independence which makes 
most normal men like to hunt and not adverse to killing. 
For the novice at mushroom hunting the genus Morchella, 
to which belongs the common sponge mushroom, will possess 
the greatest interest. The morels are among the first of 
the edible fungi to make their appearance in the early spring. 
The first member of the genus to appear is probably the 
“‘half-free” morel (Morchella semilibra). It is tall-grow- 
ing, bearing a rather small cap at the top of a slender stem. 
Like all other members of the genus this morel is edible, 
but is not so highly prized as the Morchella esculenta and 
Morchella conica, which come a little later in the season— 
though still early. These two later types differ in shape and 
size. Both are short-stalked forms, but the latter species 
bears a cap much elongated. I have found immense speci- 
mens of this mushroom which measured nearly ten inches in 
length. Morchella esculenta has a rounded, compact cap, 
much smaller than Morchella conica. In spite of its name I 
